Seems that one of our politicos has finally crossed the line. Canada's new internet spying bill is drawing a lot of opposition from the public, including massive numbers of threats against Vic Toews, the minister trying to introduce it. Looks good on him.

However, the threat I find most credible comes from Anonymous, the hacker group.

I hope they make good on this, & that it sends a powerful lesson that there are limits beyond which our so called 'leaders' cannot go to oppress the population. Most legal experts claim that there is no apparent need for this bill, that present methods are more than good enough.

Tax us to death, bury us in crime, call us all supporters of child pornographers, but don't you DARE mess with our internet freedom!

Yet another bit of evidence that the Internet is one of the most powerful tools for human freedom ever created.

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Trouble rather the tiger in his lair, than the sage among his books.For to you, kings & armies are things mighty & enduring.To him, mere toys of the moment, to be overturned at the flick of a finger.

Funny thing about Toews, he's from a small town outside Winnipeg that is Mennonite central. Settled first by farmers that make up most of the population there today. Mennonites are a German religious group that are big on moral superiority. They're a no-fun crowd, no drinking, no smoking, women stay in the kitchen kind of thing. They're fairly active in politics, highly prejudiced block voters.

The area basically elects Mennonites and Mennonites only. There are French and Dutch communities there too, hardly any English, but none of those would stand a snowflake's chance in hell of winning any election.

Toews' predecessor was a jackass called Jake Epp, who also got his way into the cabinet under Mulroney in '84. Epp railed against the "homosexual threat" facing Canada and other moral horrors of the day. Like Toews, Epp was also seen by the community as an honorable example of what good religious Mennonite culture brought to the heathen world. Also, as a teacher before a politician, disliked my non-Mennonite father, tried to fail him out of high school, and challenged him in several sporting events which he had to cheat or change the rules in order to win against a 16 year old boy. But of course, was an upstanding pillar of morality in the world.

After entering politics and being somewhat popular around town, Epp, umm, took advantage of his celebrity and.. there were some opportunities and some women, and some money from inappropriate sources, and some spending of public money in the wrong places, and, then his wife didn't appreciate these other women as much as he did, and, a divorce and then not so much bragging about his chivalry around town anymore.

Toews seems to be following right in his footsteps. Bastion of ethical behavior, why the world needs Mennonite influence, whoops, except for those affairs and the illegitimate children he doesn't acknowledge.

What's interesting is that when the US media conglomerates lobbied their politicians to threaten to cut off trade relations with Australia a few years back... memos got leaked from those companies explaining their lobbying strategy was to to under the "Protect the children" illusion, to sell it as an anti-child porn thing and get the laws passed and the mechanisms in place. After which they could pass minor alterations or convince judges to use it for other purposes like frivolous lawsuits and attacking file sharers. They said the same thing then, that if anyone would question it, just attack them for supporting pedophiles.

It's rather obviously the exact same thing they're attempting here.

If you look into what they did in Sweden, threatening to cut off trade relations there and all the BS the media companies pulled there. Like, prior questioning those accused in The Pirate Bay seizure, the police detective in charge of the case was flown out by Warner Brothers to California for a job interview. He comes back, then gee, for some reason pursues this copyright case more diligently, drumming up BS reasoning. Then quits and gets paid outrageous sums of money as a Hollywood "consultant." Oh, gee, then the judge in charge of the case is the chairman of the Swedish Anti-Piracy Organization, basically people on Hollywood's payroll, a massive conflict of interest. Hrm. Guilty. And so on.

Part of the BS is that the US politicians make threats, which foreign politicians somewhat have to act on. But, if there's public uproar over it and the foreign politicians are given an "out", then the pressure backs off. The pressure is to get things done behind the scenes.

The question to how far corruption will spread, is always "As far as you let it". So if you want to help your politicians stay honest, force them to be. Hold them accountable. They'll be as accountable as their jobs depend on it.

Sadly, Toews is immune. No possible grass roots movement could swing the block voters away from their religious superiority, so he doesn't have to be scared. Provided he's not raping animals in the street and wearing women's underwear, he'll get re-elected. He may continue his policies and not give a damn.

Sounds like when we had the SOPA/PIPA bills here in the US. Basically as I understood in they would chance the way DCP filtering works (might be wrong its kinda late) and the internet raged. It ended with the president threatening a veto and Christopher Dodd (a former sentator, now head of the MPAA) saying on the news/public forum "Hey protect the interests of our dying business model or you might find it hard to raise money from my people."

That itself bugs me that a former senator with all his political connections can leave office and the lobby on behalf of an interest group (while pulling a large paycheck) and use his connections to call favors from people he knew during his time in public service.

Its all a joke though because at least here in the US money calls the shots so behind the scenes there is probably plenty of "scratch my back I'll scratch yours" stuff going on.

At least the internet, being what it is, makes it hard for this stuff to go unnoticed.

thing is, all the major criminals use encryption anyway, and know how to handle keys, so doesn't really help at all.

Organized crime and a small minority of technically sophisticated criminals maybe, but the "average" criminal doesn't have a clue about encryption or how to hide what they do on the internet. Look at the recent rioting here in the UK - a lot of the rioters posted about what they were doing on Facebook.

Still that doesn't justify warantless internet spying - just because you can do it doesn't mean you should. No one would suggest that everyone's phone line should be tapped just because it might catch a few criminals, this is exactly the same. Targeted interception for an active investigation with a warant from a judge is one thing, spying on the entire population is something completely different and sounds more like a middle eastern dictatorship than a modern democracy.

thing is, all the major criminals use encryption anyway, and know how to handle keys, so doesn't really help at all.

Organized crime and a small minority of technically sophisticated criminals maybe, but the "average" criminal doesn't have a clue about encryption or how to hide what they do on the internet. Look at the recent rioting here in the UK - a lot of the rioters posted about what they were doing on Facebook.

i suppose it depends on what you call average criminal.

something changed around 2010, encryption is now a real problem for the fbi and cia.

prior to 2009, and the FBI even has a paper they published on this in 2009 but it might have been 2010, virtually no one used encryption. i think they publicly said that only one criminal case out of 100 used it, and it "wasn't a problem" for them to crack it.even russian spies were building their own crypto engines in house because they thought the feds could crack pgp....and you know what the first rule about encryption is right?never build your own crypto engines.

but like i said, this is no longer the case, and sorry but my sources are confidential on that. FWIW, criminals are getting smarter.IMO, the push towards Total Data Retention has nothing to do with criminals getting smarter, otherwise they might have accidentally said that. instead, they have sold the public on it through fear.

here's the latest data point i can offer you, though slightly off topic: someone managed to charge my parent's visa card, which has a 5 digit credit limit on it, with a 6 digit withdraw, without raising the automated red flags. that was 3 months ago and they still haven't found the money..sounds like MF global right?

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Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits.

Hehe, I remember a news item back in the early-ish 90s about a "sophisticated" software protection system that some company touted as virtually un-crackable.

It was cracked about 3 days after release.

The company claimed it was done by professionals with a bank of super-computers. In reality, it was probably done brute-force style with a 486 (though possibly with more than one). I'm not even sure the first pentiums were out yet...

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Mac *

"Basic research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing." [Wernher Von Braun]

* is not responsible for errors, consequential damage, or... anything.

If 'we' want to fcuk over the authorities in this matter all we have to do is load every email with keywords that flag up attention. All 'innocently' inserted of course. If everyone did this they would be overwhelmed with input.

If 'we' want to fcuk over the authorities in this matter all we have to do is load every email with keywords that flag up attention. All 'innocently' inserted of course. If everyone did this they would be overwhelmed with input.

Ohhhhhhhh, I did that just when I got my first Gmail invite to "test the system"

No cops at my door

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-= Gregg =-"Ratings are for transistors.....tubes have guidelines"(please do not PM me for advice. Non-forum business messages will be ignored)

If 'we' want to fcuk over the authorities in this matter all we have to do is load every email with keywords that flag up attention. All 'innocently' inserted of course. If everyone did this they would be overwhelmed with input.

If 'they' want to persue this route they do so on 'our' terms.

Great idea. Forum posts also work. This is one method used by hackers too. When the emails come from a 10,000 computer botnet, they can carry some real kilotonnage.If Anonymous wanted to, they could bomb Ottawa's data gathering systems that way. For a while at least. If such a killing happens, it'll be Toews fault. Serves him right for attempting to murder our privacy.But publishing embarrassing details about a politico's life is much better, because the effect of that is permanent.It's so effective in part because every closet has it's skeletons. This is a law of nature.